Omni building focus of Lubbock downtown redevelopment meeting

The Omni office building at 14th Street and Avenue K has become a target of Delbert McDougal and downtown redevelopment. Demolishing the building would cost the city between $3.1 million and $4.2 million.

The troublesome Omni building and how to incorporate the tower or its lot into downtown redevelopment was the focus of the Central Business District Tax Increment Financing Reinvestment Zone Board on Wednesday.

Pieces of the building’s exterior marble tile fell to the sidewalk below in the summer of 2010, and copper thieves took at least $100,000 worth of the metal in late July of this year, making the 47-year-old Omni worthless, according to the master developer.

Delbert McDougal, whose company leads the redevelopment effort from the private side, wants to raze the 11-story building on 14th Street or encourage its property owner to renovate the building to allow developers to repurpose the site.

“It just sits in the dead center of where we want to be building,” he said.

McDougal said downtown redevelopment plans have the building location hosting a bank and offices — either in the current Omni building or whatever may replace it.

Steve O’Neal, the city’s chief building official, said the city estimates demolition would cost between $3.1 million and $4.2 million, using conventional top-down removal and abatement techniques. Implosion would cost significantly more, though he did not have an estimate.

The city would absorb such a cost only if the City Council condemned the building. That action has yet to appear on an agenda.

The owner of the building would have to transfer the Omni’s title to the city, part of a complicated process for condemning a structure, which has yet to be proven necessary, O’Neal said.

The city has filed liens against the building’s Houston area-based property owner, Hung Nguyen, for $235,000 in outstanding fines related to the falling marble.

Nguyen said he wanted to sell the building to focus on building projects in Houston, where he owns a construction company. He declined to answer further questions.

Jeff Con, a Coldwell Bank Realtor who worked with Nguyen on the building purchase last year, said the owner said he’s already looking to sell the building to an unnamed group of out-of-town buyers.

Nguyen purchased the Omni for less than $1.75 million from a California bank with the intention of renovating the structure, but he never got around to it.

Appraisal district records show the building is owned by Lubbock Omni Office Inc. of Katy, with a property value of $2 million.

The building has been vacant since 2008, when the building’s California-based management failed to stay up to date on utility bills, prompting residents to leave, according to Avalanche-Journal archives. The building was renovated in the early 2000s.

Members of the Lubbock Historical Association didn’t return phone calls from the A-J for comment.